


Post It All

by helbrosi



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Goodbye For The Summer, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-29
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-05-23 22:46:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6132766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helbrosi/pseuds/helbrosi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After that whirlwind of a kiss, Bitty needs to find someone to confide in when he's finally home in Georgia. So he tells the only one he's trusted with his deepest secrets - his laptop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Post It All

When Eric first gets home, all he really wants to do is fling himself into his bed for a nap or a cry or maybe both. But family being family, he doesn’t get that chance until late in the night and by then, he’s a right nervous wreck. Eric sits for a moment, pondering on his bed just exactly who he can talk to. Shitty is busy dealing with his family, and Lardo with them too, still. Rans and Holster are still on their road trip, and despite all the snapchats they’d been sending the entire afternoon, Eric hasn’t heard from them in a good two hours.

Then, of course, that leaves Jack Zimmerman, but from his last text, he said he’d be busy until late talking things over with his family and George. Also, as much as Eric needed to talk to him, he didn’t want to talk to him about their moment. It wasn’t so much talking that he needed, but rather a chance to vent it all. His eyes drifted around his dark room and settled on the empty space on his desk where he usually left his laptop propped open. Huh, now that’s a thought, and it seems so obvious now. He’d make a vlog post.

Eric dug through his bag crammed with the remnants of sophomore year and pulled out his laptop. He plugged in the charger behind his desk and then turns on his laptop, keeping his mind from thinking too hard while he sets up the video recorder and the lighting of the room.

He takes a breath, looks at himself in the playback, and his the record button.

“Hey, y’all,” he stammers, eyes darting down to the floor and back to the camera. “It’s been – what, a few hours? Lord, it’s only been a few hours–”

Eric’s hands come up to cover his face and he huffs. “Okay, y’all – gosh, I’m not actually going to post this, but I had no idea, actually none, how else to get this out and down for the record. Lord.”

His hands come down, and there’s a light blush on his cheeks. “So, I hope y’all remember my teammate Jack–” he pauses, and the smile grows. “Jack, that boy, runs clear across campus to the Haus just after I’d said goodbye. I, um, well I tried to tell Jack, but y’all, I’ve never felt a fear like that since before my first skating competition. He was just – just there, and just Jack, and I know this wasn’t our last moment together, not by a long shot, but I just stood there in front of him and – and decided I would always be watching him from the sidelines, so what difference did it make if he knew how I felt or not?”

He sighs, slumping a bit in his chair. “Y’all – if someone ever tells you they tried to – to confess their feelings for someone, and then didn’t, just give them a hug after. It’s a devastating moment, ‘cause you know it’s your own two hands that are breaking your heart.”

Eric shakes his head and rubs one eye before sitting up straight. “Anyway, there I was alone in the Haus, helping Chowder settle into his new room and running the water works, when Jack Zimmerman storms in like a bull. He’s huffing and puffing, and have you ever seen a kicked puppy? Because that was the look Jack had, though probably more like a – a melted rink or something. Anyways, he comes up to me, and bless his heart, this boy just kisses me. Me, Eric Bittle!” His smile has grown again, except now it’s framed by a strong blush on each cheek, and his eyes slip past the camera in a moment of memory. “Well I wasn’t going to say no, not when I’d already – fallen so hard for him.”

One hand reaches up and holds his cheek. “He kissed me for a few moments, then we had to stop because Jack really had to go. So I gave him one last kiss for the road, and then he was backing out of the door, promising he’d text me. Text me! I swear on Betsy II, I didn’t feel my knees go weak at all during that kiss, but as I heard him thud down the stairs, my knees just gave out and I fell in a chair.” He lets his head drop and he sighs. “Lord, I don’t even know anymore, but let it be said, Jack is a man of his word.”

Eric raises his head and leans closer to the camera conspiratorially. “Jack texted me not two seconds after he was out of the house. It was short, just a ‘Sorry, but I really mean it’ and then we’ve been texting sporadically through the day. I know he had lunch and then a drive down to Providence to get all set up, and I’ve been flying home and settling in, saying hi to everyone who stops by, so we haven’t had a chance to – to figure anything out, but I have hope, y’all.”

Eric leans back in his chair, smile just as sweet as ever. “Y’all, I’m signing off here, but thank you all for listening. I’ll do a proper update in a few, once I get used to everything, but it’ll go well. I just know it.” Then he waves at the camera, and moves to hit the stop button when his phone starts ringing. Eric nearly leaps across to the bed where he tossed it and sees, breathlessly, that it’s–

“Jack!”

“Hey Bittle,” he says warmly, but his voice is a little strained. “You get home okay?”

“Yeah,” he responds softly, sitting back down in his desk chair. Lord, one sentence and he’s already weak in the knees. “No delays, and almost no traffic here. You?”

“Not so bad,” Jack replies. “Driving was a little under an hour, but it shouldn’t always take that long. We got a chance to drive through a neighborhood or two before it was two dark, though, so I think I might know where I’m living.”

“They’re not pairing you up with another player?” Eric starts fiddling with a thread loose on his shirt. “I just – I remember hearing about that for most rookie players.”

“Yeah, most do.” Jack exhales like he’s sitting down too, so he probably is. “But I’m not most rookies, and I’m better prepared for living on my own. I’m a lot older than most of the rookies.”

“Well and the young ones are likely going to get star-struck when you walk into the locker room, much less their living room.”

“What, as star-struck as you were?”

Something warm and fluttery suddenly settles in his navel. “Oh please, like I’d get star-struck by old grumpy Jack. I had to ask the other boys who your dad even was!”

“Really?” Jack asks. “You didn’t know?”

“Nope,” he replies, “I followed some of Samwell’s team news when I started applying for sports scholarships, but then I had to focus on graduating, and my team. And that was it.”

“Huh. And here I thought you were just being a little shit to spite my record.”

Eric mock gasps. “Jack Zimmerman, how dare you! I will have you know, I was every bit a little shit regardless of your record.” 

Jack starts chuckling low on the other side, and Eric can’t help but smile. 

“God, Bitty,” Jack says, and for some reason the nickname sends a little shiver down his spine, “I’m already wishing you were here in Providence.”

Eric’s heart sinks. So they were there. “Yeah,” he manages to pull together, “yeah, so do I.”

Jack clears his throat. “Look, I – I’m sorry. For not saying something sooner, God, for not realizing sooner – I’m sorry.”

“Jack,” Eric says softly, “don’t be sorry. I wish we’d had more time, but I wouldn’t have traded any of it for anything.”

“No, neither would I, you’re right.” He sighs. “But I just wanted to say, if I had realized even ten, fifteen minutes earlier, I would have said something sooner. I would have told you there on the roof of Faber, or when we went to coffee, or fucks sake, even during checking practice, but I–”

“Jack!” Eric finally manages to cut him. “Jack, stop. Look I get it, I wish I’d been not as afraid to say something sooner, so I didn’t have to think of your graduation day as my last chance. But – but we’re not there now. We’re here, and – I don’t know where here is, actually.”

Jack pauses for a minute. “Um, I’m – I’m not planning to come out in my rookie year. Not to the whole NHL anyway.”

Eric blinks. “O-okay.”

“Some people know I’m – well, that I’m me. But those are people I trust, and I’m just not ready to trust the NHL with that.”

Eric can feel his heart sinking inch by inch into his stomach, and it doesn’t feel good. “So…so what does that mean?”

“Well, I’m not gonna tell everyone in Providence, but you can’t tell your follows or whatever, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone who wasn’t in the Haus or on the team, but I guess your family’s okay if you want–”

“Jack, wait,” this is suddenly not sounding as bad, but he needs to make sure, “what exactly can I not tell all those people?”

“About us.”

Eric makes a frustrated sound. “What about us?”

“Oh, um.” Jack pauses. “Bitty, will you go out with me?”

Eric can’t help but let a little squeak out when Jack says, ‘go out’, his face getting warm all-over. He starts nodding furiously, then remembering he can’t be seen, says, “Yes yes yes, I’m sorry, I just wasn’t sure–”

There’s more laughing from Jack’s side for a moment, then he says, “God, you’re adorable.”

Well, if Eric thought he was blushing then, he was surely overheating from all the blood to his face now. He was glad it was dark in his room, and that no one could see him, curled around his phone in his computer chair and blushing like a kid who watched something dirty for the first time. 

“Well yes I am, Mr. Zimmerman,” Eric says, playing up his underlying accent a bit more, “and you best not forget it.”

Jack’s side is quiet for a couple moments, then, “Jesus Bitty, are you always this much a tease?”

He smirks to himself. Accents, huh? “Is that at all a problem, honey?”

“Never stop,” and Eric can’t help laughing once at that. “Shit, when can you visit Providence?”

Eric’s laughing dies down then, and he pauses. “Uh, I – I don’t – really?”

“Of course, but don’t come right this second.”

Eric blinks. “E-excuse you, Mr. Zimmerman, but I happen to have more control than that.”

Jack groans quietly this time. “Keep that up and I won’t.”

Eric says nothing but huffing into the phone and is definitely not thinking of Jack in his nice slacks from today, or Lord, the last barefoot ensemble he was wearing the night befor–

“Bitty? You there?”

Eric snaps back to focus and just makes a sound of acknowledgement. He’s somewhere, alright, but he’s fully back by the time Jack swings into his next sentence.

“Look, I want you to visit, but I need to find my apartment first and then get my team schedule for summer. We’ll find a date then, okay?”

The enormity of it suddenly hits Eric. Somehow, Jack Zimmerman asking him to come visit in him Providence at some nebulous point in the future hits him harder that this is – could be, will be – real even harder than Jack standing in the entrance of his old room huffing and puffing from a mad dash across campus. He, Eric Bittle, was just asked out by Jack-fucking-Zimmerman, graduated captain of the Samwell Men’s Hockey team, newest recruit to the Providence Falconers, son of champion Bad Bob Zimmerman, and the center of a lot of the hockey debates he’s bound to end up watching in the next few weeks. It’s a promise – even if it’s just a couple months, heavens, or if it’s much longer than that – that they’re going to have something together, secret and just for them, that Eric never allowed himself to believe was even possible, that Eric would have laughed in your face if you had told him it was possible any day other than today. And yet, despite the impossible literally running up to Eric and kissing him, he has only one question on his mind.

“Lardo’s going to chirp me so hard for all of this.”

**Author's Note:**

> So this is not my first written fic, but this is the first one I've felt comfortable posting. This was just an exercise in excitement and procrastination, so any and all comments will be welcome. Thanks!


End file.
